Transcript EUROPEAN UNION POLICIES AND PRACTICES FOR LIFELONG GUIDANCE

EUROPEAN UNION POLICIES AND
PRACTICES FOR LIFELONG
GUIDANCE
Keynote address to UIMP Summer School Training
Programme on Lifelong Guidance, Santander, 9 September
2013 by Dr John McCarthy, Director, International Centre for
Career Development and Public Policy
www.iccdpp.org
Email: [email protected]
QUESTION FOR YOU!
• What does it feel like to be a European right
now?
• Do you feel European?
The challenges of feeling European in
2013!
• The dominance of some older EU siblings
(hermanos)?
• The equality of labour market opportunities
among siblings?
• The role of labour market career guidance
services in this economic climate?
• The role of education-based career guidance
services in this economic climate?
• The impacts of cuts in public services: greater
inequality for citizens?
What does the European Union have to offer us
in terms of lifelong guidance policies and
practices?
• European Social Charter (Article 9):
• The Contracting Parties (Member States) accept as the aim
of their policy, to be pursued by all appropriate means,
both national and international in character, the
attainment of conditions in which the following rights and
principles may be effectively realised:
• “Everyone has the right to appropriate facilities for
vocational guidance with a view to helping him choose an
occupation suited to his personal aptitude and interest”
• “the enjoyment of social rights should be secured without
discrimination on grounds of race, colour, sex, religion,
political opinion, national extraction or social origin”
What does the European Union have to offer us
in terms of lifelong guidance policies and
practices?
• The political importance attached to career guidance provision as
expressed through the two Resolutions of the EU Council of Ministers for
Education (2004, 2008)
• The political importance attached to career guidance in many EU positions
adopted and in European Commission documents on adult learning,
higher education, VET, and school learning since 2003 and looking forward
to 2020
• EU funding and support for the ELGPN – the European Lifelong Guidance
Policy Network – since December 2007 (focus on issues of access, career
management skills, national and regional coordination, quality assurance
criteria, and developing an evidence base, as directed by the 2008 Council
Resolution; methodology – peer learning, exchange, collaboration, good
examples of practice)
• The aims and outcomes of these political initiatives: Prescriptions for
excellence in career guidance services; comparability of treatment/career
guidance services for all EU citizens
QUESTION FOR YOU
• What is the political significance of career
guidance?
• Why is it important to policymakers in the
education, employment and social fields?
CONTRIBUTIONS OF CAREER GUIDANCE TO POLICIES
FOR EDUCATION, EMPLOYMENT AND SOCIAL AFFAIRS
• Education including VET: participation in
learning, engagement in learning, retention,
achievement, qualification output, progression
• Employment including CVET: motivation,
performance, progression, employment
transitions, plus all of the Education and VET for
CVET
• Social: equal opportunity including gender, social
equity, social inclusion, overcoming social,
economic and geographical barriers
QUESTION FOR YOU
• How can we achieve comparability of career
guidance services for all citizens across
Europe?
How do we try to achieve comparability of
treatment/career guidance services for all EU
citizens?
• Through the development of Common EU Reference Tools
• What is a common EU reference tool?
• -prescription for excellence in the form of an agreed set of
reference points;
• -a tool to improve learner experience and performance;
• -a tool to assist national and regional policy reform;
• -a tool to create a European space for education,
employment, and social inclusion
• Examples: European Qualification Framework for Lifelong
Learning, the European Framework for Key Competences,
Europass, EQAVET, the Quality of Higher Education,
European Employment Guidelines
Common EU reference tools for
lifelong guidance policies and systems
• Common aims and principles (2005)
• The Aims refer to the role of career guidance in
supporting policies for education, employment and
social inclusion
• E.g “to enable citizens to plan their learning and work
pathways in accordance with their life-goals…..
• The Principles describe some qualities of career
guidance provision that EU citizens should experience
when using career guidance services
• E.g. impartiality, empowerment, accessibility,
continuous improvement of services
Moving beyond 2005
• Common Aims and Principles considered as delivery
manager and practitioner orientated
• Review results 2009: they have been used by some
Member States for policy and systems development
(national review and strategy)
• However, they predate the existence of the European
Lifelong Guidance Policy Network (ELGPN)
• A meta-indicator approach capturing the ELGPN policy
learning experience and other international learning is
now required, broadened to cover all dimensions of
lifelong guidance policies and systems
Current proposal being considered by
ELGPN
• To develop EU Guidelines for Lifelong
Guidance Policy and Systems Development
• Meaning of “guideline”: recommendation,
advice, proposal, direction, suggestion,
specification
• To have these guidelines politically endorsed
by EU Council of Ministers
Suggested content areas for EU Guidelines
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Guidance in schools and in youth VET.
Guidance in tertiary education.
Guidance in adult education and adult VET.
Guidance for the employed.
Guidance for the unemployed.
Career guidance for older adults.
• Career guidance for disadvantaged groups.
Suggested content areas for EU Guidelines
contd.
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Improving access to guidance services.
Improving careers information.
Training and qualifications.
Funding career guidance.
Co-ordination and strategic leadership.
Ensuring the quality of career guidance.
Assessing the effectiveness of career guidance.
Funding of career guidance services
Example of what an EU Guideline might look like
Careers information
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Proposed structure of a Guideline:
What it is
Why it is important
What is good practice
Presented in terms of empowerment of EU citizens
• Based on an Expert Paper commissioned by the
European Commission in 2002 as part of the
international review of policies for career guidance
undertaken with OECD
Example of a Guideline: “Improving
careers information”
• What it is: “Careers information refers to any
kind of information in any medium that assists EU
citizens to make meaningful choices about
learning and work opportunities.
• It includes information on occupations, the labour
market, education and training programmes, and
pathways between these.
• It also includes information obtained through
experiential learning, e.g. work shadowing, work
experience, work simulation.”
Example of a Guideline: “Improving
careers information”
• Why it is important: Good careers information enables
EU citizens to make choices of learning and work
opportunities and pathways that are based on the
realities of occupations and labour markets.
• Such information enables citizens:
• -(a) to compare themselves, their circumstances, and
their interests and aspirations with/to the
requirements of jobs, work, education and training
programmes and labour market opportunities;
• -(b) to identify a range of pathways towards these
opportunities; and
• -(c) to make tentative choices.
Example of a Guideline: “Improving
careers information”
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What is good practice:
(a) All EU citizens have access to experiential and non-experiential
forms of careers information.
(b) All EU citizens learn to source such information and to evaluate
such sources.
(c) The careers information itself, no matter in which learning form or
media, should have the following characteristics:
- be designed taking users’ needs (what are their questions) and social
milieu into account;
- help users to identify their own needs and to ask themselves
questions;
- be comprehensible (language, multi-modal-text image, graphics,
sound);
- be pedagogical in design;
- be accurate, up-to-date, precise and non-discriminatory
What is the value of having EU Guidelines?
• Political statement of direction
• Their existence means that they have to be
taken into consideration in national and EU
policy development for education,
employment and social inclusion
What is the current effect of EU level instruments in
education, employment and social inclusion at national and
regional policy levels?
• Follow-up question: what is the current status of career
guidance provision at national and regional levels?
• Answer 1: Across Europe, and at EU level discourses, there
is increasing recognition of importance of career guidance
for education and employment policies (Council
Resolutions, ELGPN)
• Answer 2: Still in many countries at national, regional and
local levels, career guidance provision is still not a core or
integral part of education and employment policies
• Defining and adopting and politically endorsing a set of EU
Guidelines for career guidance policies means that these
cannot be ignored at national and regional levels
• They cannot be imposed…but…they cannot be ignored!
Concluding comments
• Huge disparities in labour market opportunities
between countries make a stronger case for mobility
for learning and work, and for a European space for
learning and work
• Very few workers and students (all levels and sectors of
education) choose geographical mobility for learning
and work
• Most are forced economically to do so, just as Europe
experiences emigration pressures from neighbouring
countries
• Can be a real loss and real cost for their countries,
communities, families
Concluding comments
• Better to send well prepared emigrants
• Better to have some comparability in reception
in countries that act as hosts:
• e.g. recognition of qualifications, transparent
and comparable statements of knowledge and
competences gained
• We have to take economic emigration seriously –
no matter to which continent or country
• Career guidance in all forms of education and
labour market settings is essential to help intercountry transitions
Concluding comments
• Challenging times
• Need to think outside our local, regional and national
boxes
• Need to support and develop existing networks for policy
and mobility and where necessary to create new ones to
help our citizens with international transitions
• Need to develop common EU standards and guidelines to
ensure that such transitions are really supported
• Need to promote such standards and guidelines beyond
the EU borders
• Wish you the best for your training programme and
conference